Boba Network (BOBA) - The Real Layer 2 Player Is Here!!!

Hey guys and welcome back to Box Mining. Now today we have a very anticipated video because we're talking about scaling Ethereum, making transactions cheaper and faster, and the wizardry that makes it possible. So we've got Yon Lippard here. Hi Yon. Hey Michael. He's got the most academic credentials and the big brains to match that. We also got Alan the visionary. Hi Michael. Hi everyone. Now they're building up the Boba network and I guess just for the audience here, what is the big vision? What are you guys trying to solve with the Boba network? Well, the core problem we're trying to solve with Boba is really to make the benefits of Ethereum, crypto in general, much more accessible to a much larger audience. Ethereum is just so expensive and too slow. So that's what we're here to solve. We see it's going faster. What is the long-term vision? Do you want to replace, is it to replace Ethereum? Is it to provide this alternative? Is it to get everyone in Ethereum to start using you guys? What's the long-term vision for Boba here? Well, Ethereum itself's capacity is limited. Now there are improvements that are coming down the road that will make it more, they'll introduce more capacity, but a layer two solution like Boba will always be more cost-effective. So the way we see it is more and more transactions will migrate to Boba and Ethereum will become a settlement layer, so to speak. And active transactions should be happening on Boba because it's just so much faster and so much cheaper. Okay. So how do you get more people to use it though? Because you just started a network. You still have to click a few clicks on MetaMask to start using it. What's your kind of plan to get more people and for this vision to come to life? It takes a village, truly. So it's not just up to Boba network, but also all of the developers that are building on Boba. So for example, the early AMMs that have launched like OolongSwap, Senpai, Swappuchan, they've all had a huge role to play in attracting users and liquidity to the Boba network. And collectively, we're going to bring more usage to the network and also provide more interesting opportunities for folks to farm and trade NFTs. Right. And right now there's a migration process, right? So if you're on Ethereum, you don't exactly have Ethereum on Boba network, right? So you have to bridge it across, right? So, so how does that bridging process work? Well, it, it is, we, we, we've been working on, on that user experience to the point where we even subsidizing some of the costs for bridging to Boba in order to reduce a couple of clicks in the process. Of course, there's still a lot of work to be done, but basically you just come to gateway.boba.network and select what, how much ETH you want to bridge over to Boba. And the experience is actually pretty seamless. And once you've done that bridging process, you, you will just see that Ethereum will show up in your layer two Boba wallet. And then afterwards you can just use it as normal. It's like, like as if you're using Ethereum network. Exactly. You know, what's the user like? So, uh, you know, when I use Boba, obviously, uh, I'm on Ethereum. When I switched to Boba network, I don't have anything, right? So how do users get the coins onto Boba and how do people use Boba? Well, that's a great question. And we've done a lot of work in simplifying that workflow, making sure new users get a lot of handholding along the way so that they're not lost. So all you need to do is go to gateway.boba.network, connect your MetaMask to, to, to the site, and then we'll walk you through it. We'll ask you to switch over to Boba. You select how much Ethereum you want to bridge over the Boba network. And once that's done, and this is, it's, it's a pretty quick process. And once that's done, you see that show up in your layer two Boba wallet. And from that point on, you can just use your Boba wallet, just like you were using your Ethereum wallet. You can go to WulongSwap, SenpaiSwap, Swap Hochan to, to start swapping, start, start adding your, liquidity to pools, start farming. There's lots to do. We also had just the first NFT mint that happened over the weekend, Boba Punks launched and it's, they sold out all 10,000 Boba Punks in less than an hour. So that was great. And then now building an NFT marketplace. There's just a lot of activities going on and many more applications to come. Right. Right. And the other question is this, right? So when you're on a Boba network, do you use Ethereum or do you use Boba as your currency of transaction? So, you know, which one should I bridge over first? Well, we use ETH as, as the transaction fee, because we figure most people have ETH. We don't want to require users to have to acquire Boba tokens first before they do anything. So ETH is still the currency for transactions. You just need to bridge over ETH. Now, if you have other assets you want to bridge over, of course, that would be great. There are many different pools you can join and farm. Right. Okay. So, in that case, I have to ask you, what's the point of the Boba token then, right? Well, the Boba token serves two purposes. One is to participate in joint governance of the network. We're going to be rolling out the Boba dial very soon and the whole community, any Boba token holders will be invited to join in proposing changes to the network. How do we make it better to vote on proposals together? And then on top of that, the second purpose is staking. We've already made a public commitment where we'll be sharing a portion of the network profits with token holders who stake the tokens on a Boba network. And the reason for doing this is to make sure we build an engaged community of Boba token holders around the network. It's not enough to just have really strong technology. We need to have a strong community to help Boba grow together as well. Because imagine you're holding Boba tokens and you now have a say in how the network evolves and you get a cut of the profits. What are you going to do? You're going to tell your family and friends about how great Boba is. You want to attract them over to Boba network and start farming there because we then all rise together. Right, right. So, okay, so I have a question here. So you said there are profits that are being made, right? So where are the profits coming from? Well, so the profits come from the transactions that happen on the network. Any transaction that happens, we'll need to burn some layer two gas. And then in turn, the network itself, we need to pay Ethereum to store cryptographic proofs on the main chain to prove that we've done the transactions correctly. And the difference between that is the profit. Now, there's a certain break even point. There's a minimum level of transactions that need to happen before the network starts generating profits. It's a little bit like running a bus or airline, right? If you have too few passengers, then you're losing money. But once you've passed a certain point, then you start making money. Right, right, right. So it's like, it's a case where the more people that come on to this bus, the more, the better it is. And another question, okay, no, no, no, no question. How big is this bus? Because like how much profit can be made here? How big is this bus? That's a good question. So we can, we can pack up to 54 transactions into one block. And in terms of how much profit can be made, that's a variable because over time, we're going to be tweaking the pricing structure to make sure that the network is price competitive. And the more, the more volume that the network processes, actually, the more ability we have to lower the price, the cost on a per transaction basis, so that we share the savings with, with all the participants on the network, all the users. So now this is the magic of this, right? Now, now we're like the magic school bus bundling transactions together as a coupon deal, we can get to a location together. So Jan, how is this all possible? You know, what are the breakthroughs that led to this point of, you know, being able to do this? Well, people have been worried about scaling and cost for a long time, and we're standing on the shoulders of giants. Of course, many smart developers have been thinking about this and working on this for a long time. Most obviously, the optimism team, which are, which have done exceptional work on the engineering side. We have, we have things to contribute. But of course, we are standing on the shoulders of some really talented engineers at optimism. What's, what's special about what optimism has built, and what we're also building on, is that they've made some very good design decisions that leaves them with a very modular system, where different pieces of the optimistic roll-up can be switched out and updated rather easily. And that means that from a design perspective, it should be reasonably straightforward to keep the optimistic roll-ups updated and to keep adding additional functionality. The other thing that's really important to us is that Boba is as compatible as possible with virtually all smart contracts. What we've learned is that even tiny differences can create massive headaches. Most obviously, if you're an exchange, and you have to make a few small changes to your smart contracts, that immediately triggers a re-audit. So even apparently minor changes in your Solidity code can be a major barrier to adoption. And that's why the main focus, the main motivation for this transition to Boba V2 is to make it really, really easy for you to take your existing Solidity code and deploy it on Boba. So what is the big picture vision of how this is possible? Just for people to understand, you know, how does layer two even function in this case? And you know, what is an optimistic roll-up? Well, the reason it's called an optimistic roll-up is because you give people the benefit of doubt. You say that the operator is probably doing everything correctly, and that's why it's optimistic. But of course, you need a lot of infrastructure in place to make absolutely sure that that's actually true. But the reason it's called optimistic is because the system assumes that the operator is truthful. What Boba has is community fraud detectors that you can run on your own laptop that look at every single one of our state routes and transactions that we submit to L1. And you're able on your own laptop to compute whether we're being honest or fraudulent. And it's really important to us that the largest number of people perform the validation on the network, because when a lot of people are inspecting what we do, that gives the community the biggest safety. And then any kind of fraud that could be committed will be detected as quickly as possible. Now, okay, I definitely think there will be viewers who worry about this because people who don't really understand Layer 2's technology will be like, oh my god, this just sounds centralized. Why don't I use a centralized database in that case? Why would I even touch Layer 2? Why don't I just go and use MySQL? So the way the system is set up is that all the funds that are on the L2 actually are on Ethereum main chain in bridges or in volts that are positioned on Ethereum main chain. So everything that's going on on the L2 is simply a representation of tokens and ETH that actually live on the L1. So for example, when you bridge funds into the L2, what's going on is that we will mint a representation of those funds on the L2. And when you leave L2, we'll burn them. But the actual tokens reside on the L1 always. So that gives people a little bit extra security on what would happen if we go down. Other reasons people trust us is it's obviously an open source project. So everyone can see exactly what the code is. The code has been audited once and is now being re-audited a second time. And so from an audit perspective, we're increasingly comfortable. Now, there are many ways to do this, right? So my biggest douchebag question I've been asking people is, oh, why did you use this type of Layer 2 solution? Because there's ZK roll-ups, there's optimistic roll-ups, there's optimism. Can you tell me kind of briefly, for the audience to know, briefly, what is the difference just between all these type of Layer 2 solutions? Well, you're absolutely right. There's two main categories. There's the ZK world and the optimistic roll-ups. And speaking from an academic perspective, I love cryptography. I love zero-knowledge proofs. And the math is beautiful. But then the really big question is, how does the technology perform in the real world? How expensive is it? What is the user experience like? And what is the developer experience like? And the main problems, we spend a lot of time looking into all possible ways of doing everything, including zero-knowledge. But the problems we ran into is that in the ZK world, the technology is not yet at the point where you can take an arbitrary smart contract and run it on a ZK Layer 2. Just as one example, right now, the demonstration example, which is Uniswap V2, is now running on a ZK L2. But of course, Uniswap in the real world is already running at V3 and internally Uniswap is working on V4. Uniswap V2. So if it takes you a year to take a DeFi exchange and get it to work on your ZK L2, you're always going to be a year behind where the actual DeFi world is. And the other main question is, what is the cost? So as we looked very carefully at the state of the art in the ZK world, the two main barriers that came to mind is current inability to immediately and easily run arbitrary solidity smart contracts. And we had significant cost concerns. And that's what fundamentally drove our decision to go with a optimistic rollup. The next question is, okay, what's the next step? For the audience here, what's their call to action? Should I try Boba? What should I do? Definitely try Boba. There's so much going on and so many new dApps launching all the time. It's a lot of fun and a lot of farming opportunities that many Boba users have been enjoying. So definitely jump on. There'll be a number of NFT series launching as well. You don't want to miss out. So guys, definitely check out Boba. We're going to get some tutorials on how to use Boba as well. So that's coming out very soon. So you guys want to check that out. I'll look some links down below. Check out the new videos. Make sure you subscribe. And Yan and Alan, thank you guys so much for coming here, guys. Thank you. This has been Super Michael.